


Summers

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-28
Updated: 2007-02-28
Packaged: 2019-01-19 03:22:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12402051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Summers.  For spending time with family, and under the blazing sun.  Times for laughter and tears, for hugs and kisses, for making memories and remembering others of times gone by.





	Summers

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

Summers.

For spending time with family, and under the blazing sun.  Times for laughter and tears, for hugs and kisses, for making memories and remembering others of times gone by.

You go home to your muggle family, in your muggle home every summer and wonder at how they live.  Life for them is so simple – they fight, but it is over trivial things, like whether your Mum told your Dad to get butter on the way home, or how long it takes to get home from the bus stop down the road.  Trivial things that you know don’t matter; not in the great scheme of things.  Not in places where dark wizards rule supreme, even if the people do not know it.  Not in places where evil reigns because the people deny its existence, because they are scared that if they do their worlds full of false friendship and fun will fall apart.   Not in places where people never really did have worlds to fall apart.

 You have always clung to your muggle roots; never been ashamed of them.  This was always a home, a haven, a place you missed at night, and which a thought of could keep you going as the world you lived in grew darker and darker, and as the clouds seemed ever closer on the horizon.

You go home to see family.  It’s big, and happy, and comfortable.  Everyone knows and loves each other, regardless of faults.  They fight and you marvel.  They are so at home with each other, and they know it.  

You have always felt a little less comfortable, a little more like an outcast.  They spend time together all year round, whilst you’re away for most of the year at a boarding school a million miles away, in a castle filled with treasures that are there if you seek them, and where darkness is beginning to seep in through the dark shadows.

They have never known what really happens at the school you go to where a whisper can float a feather and a flick of a wand can kill.  They believe your lies, and sometimes it revolts you, how you can do this to them.  They crowd around for news of your fancy boarding schools and listen to your lies and believe you and _smile_ , and it breaks your heart and sickens you at the same time.  Sometimes you can feel the bile rising up your throat as you feed them these falsities and you smile and pretend, and tell them what they want to hear.

You don’t feel comfortable around them.  Your life to them is the stuff of fairytales.  That is why you must never tell them your great secret: because they must never believe in fairytales.  Fairytales are lies and full of pretty nonsense that they don’t realise is a dangerous weapon.  So you won’t tell them; you will keep them safe.

They don’t notice as you come home every year, older and wiser and with bigger bags under your eyes.  It’s not, as your parents will tell themselves and believe because they want to, the stress, or the lack of sleep on the train.  It’s more than that: it’s a tiredness that aches in your bones, and grows every time you see a small face contort with agony and leave the Great Hall.  And sometimes you want to go and hug them, and share their sorrow, but you know you mustn’t, that you don’t truly understand.  So you sit their useless and watch a person’s life be torn apart.

You go home and watch the television once a year.  It always amazes you how a little black box can hold such power over people.  Your cousins talk long and hard about it, and gossip about these exotic actors and actresses whose lives are just _filled_ with drama.

You go home and sit and watch the Bold and the Beautiful with your Nanna, and are fascinated with these people’s lives.  Every year you see the show, one couple has broken up and are in the midst of a big feud, but the next year they’ll be back together and getting married.  It fascinates you how they can live life like this and still feel fulfilled.  Don’t they, in their high-fashion, romantic lives, ever feel the least bit empty? Like there may be something more worth fighting for than a fashion label?  Do they ever wonder why they spend all this time absorbed in gossip when they could be doing something to help?

You go home and play cricket in the backyard.  It’s such a tradition – ever since you can remember it’s been that way.  You can’t bowl; or maybe you once could, but it’s become another victim, like the horse riding and playing the violin, of a life lived differently.  So you just stand there, holding the bat, and defend your wickets.  Maybe you take it too seriously, but to you it’s more than a game.  It’s a representation of life.  The ball is the enemy, and you are just another soldier holding the bat, trying, sometimes in vain, to keep danger at bay and protect the most important things.  When you are caught out, or bowled, or somehow are made to leave your position, there is always someone to replace you, unless you are the last batter, and are sometimes relied upon to win the game.  Maybe that’s a little strange, but lately you’ve felt that way, like everything is symbolic for something, if you look hard enough.

You always bat last – it’s probably because you aren’t any good at the game and have been known to shriek when the ball comes near you – but it’s also because you have to have the responsibility of being the last in a line of defence that is going to crumble.  In time, you know you will be there: the last batsman (or woman, or your case - but your views on sexism are a whole other story).  You know that you will be there, and when the runs are tallied, you know that in this close match it is not going to be you with the largest score, but yours will have been the all important decider.

You go home to see the old tree in your backyard grow, and grow, and grow.  You can remember planting it when your parents first built the house, even though you were only two.  But then, you’ve always had a good memory.  Now the old tree is almost unrecognisable: its bloomed, grown from a scrawny sapling to a tall tree that has seen life and survived the greatest storms.  One day, in the future, there may be a big storm and its trunk may snap, but it will always be remembered for what it was: a tree that had stood and tried and held it together to the last.

You think of yourself like the tree sometimes.  You’ve grown together, and on breezy days when the sun peeks through the shade its leaves provide, you sit and let your mind wander from the book you hold in your hand.  You contemplate your life and how you’ve grown, just like the tree.  It’s funny, but sometimes you feel like the tree is the only person who truly understands you.  

You go home to you childhood bed and lay there at night and stare out the window at the world you were once at home in.  You lay and stare out at the stars and the lights of the others house and hear the dog next door bark and smile because this could have been yours.  You could have been a doctor and saved people’s lives, you could have become a politician and actually made things happen, but no, you’re stuck in a world where old money controls power, and you’re not ever likely to rise higher than head of some obscure little department in the ministry, because you’re muggleborn and smart and have an opinion that doesn’t agree with theirs.

You go home and read books on philosophy and think.  You will sit in that perfectly placed bough of that old tree and think about life, nestled amongst the leaves of one of nature’s greatest creations.  Sometimes you stop and can hardly think anymore because the beauty of the world around you is so vibrant and glorious you have to stop and stare.  You think it must be wonderful to see through a child’s eyes, ones of innocence, where the world is all new and exciting, just like magic was to you when you were a tender eleven year old who thought she could take on the world.

You go home and go groceries shopping with your Mum.  You tear the little plastic bags away from each other and are delighted with these little novelties.  You pick up an avocado and press down near  the top, just like your Mum taught you all those years ago, to tell whether it’s ripe or not.  Some things are never forgotten.

You walk around the supermarket pushing a trolley and absorbed in the atmosphere of doing something for yourself.  At Hogwarts, there are elves that pick up your laundry and cook your meals, and you wonder how you will survive on your own.  Sometimes you will glimpse a face, someone whom you might have known in what seems an eternity ago.  You might have even been friends.  Alas, some things that oughtn’t to be are forgotten.

You go home and have a cold shower.  A proper cold shower, one cold enough that when you turn on the water it’s hard to breathe and you feel like you’re being smothered.  So cold you have to gasp for air and tell yourself to take deep breaths.  You’re sick of the magically warm water at school.  In fact, you’re sick of school.  You’re sick of having to lie about it, you’re sick of the façade.  Your sick of the false world you seem to live in once you set foot in the castle.  You’re sick of feeling like you’re living in a dream.  You’re sick of having to check to see if you’re still alive, and haven’t just died like Professor Binns and kept on like nothing had happened.  His is an utter tragedy, not one to be made fun of.  It’s deeply depressing to think how little it must have meant to him to really feel _alive_.  

You go home to remind yourself that life doesn’t have to be a continual struggle.  You go home because, although you don’t fit in there anymore, there are people who live life happily.  There are people whose lives have other purposes other than surviving a pointless war. 

You go home because, however much you wish you weren’t, you are a hopeless romantic and have hope. 


End file.
